insta-friday 1.3.2014

Can you believe it’s already the first Friday of 2014?!? 2014! It’s crazy.

Here are a few of the pictures I’ve snapped with my phone over the last week.

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Can I tell you how much I love Famous Footwear? I loooove Famous Footwear. Like I want to sit in a tree with them.

The Man-Child needed/wanted some new shoes. The boy is seriously the roughest person on shoes ever. So he and I headed over to Famous Footwear to find some shoes for him. It wasn’t difficult since he already knew what he wanted. I pulled out my trusty little Famous Footwear app and realized I had a $20 reward certificate and they had a $10 coupon on their app. I can handle saving $30 on a $50 pair of Vans.

If you don’t have their app…get it!

And no they don’t pay me to say that…but they should!

Well I guess they kind of do with all the money they save me on shoes!

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The girlies wanted sparkly finger nails and I gave them very sparkly finger and toe nails!

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We have enjoyed some pretty amazing sunsets lately.

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We spent Sunday evening watching movies. I love, love, love that Hammie will still climb up on my lap and cuddle.

Such a sweet boy.

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And speaking of Hammie…

He finally had his last physical therapy appointment. It has been a really long 5 months and it’s nice to be done with all the mess with his leg.

He still has a little bit of a limpy run with that leg, but it hasn’t slowed him down in the slightest.

To get the full impact of this broken leg saga you have to go back to the beginning of the Chaos story. The leg he broke was the same one that had so many issues when he was little and had so many years of therapy already. The limpy is just another bump in the road that will be overcome in time. This boy is a serious miracle child!

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New Years Eve was spent with my Family. We had a great spread of food so it wasn’t a problem to stay awake and welcome in the New Year.

All the drinks from QT might have helped also…

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Well not all of us were together for New Years Eve. The Man-Child and Einstein went to the New Year Eve Dance with Cousin Emma. Aubrey stayed home with the rest of us and played games.

It’s nice to finally have cousins that are the same age as the kids living so close to us.

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On January 1st Christmas was cleaned up. I am usually ready to take the Christmas tree down the day after Christmas, but this year it took a little while longer to get the job done.

Plus my Christmas decorations had outgrown our totes and we had to add a new one this year. It drives me crazy that it’s red with a green lid and not green with a red lid… OCD much?

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By the time Christmas was cleaned up it was time for dinner and thankfully crappy pizzas hit the spot.

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I was pretty pathetic on my reading last year and this year I vow to get my reading mojo back.

This is the first book of the year…with a goal of reading 50.

I better get busy reading.

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Rainbow Loom…

Need I say more?

The girlies are getting really good and fast at cranking these bracelets out. I’m not quite sure I need 7 rubber band bracelets…and how long do they really expect me to keep wearing them?!?

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Find me on Instagram @embracethechaos

Merriest of Christmas

The Chaos Crew had a delightfully Merry Christmas.

These are a few of the photo highlights. I’m working on a post that covers most of December and I hope to have it up before the end of the month.

I didn’t send Christmas cards out this year…but if I had they might have looked something like this:

I did gather the kiddos and head down to the mall on the 23rd of December for Santa pictures. We made a pact that we will never speak about how long we had to stand in line…it’s embarrassing that I made them stay there as long as we did, but totally worth it because of the awesome picture.

Christmas Eve wouldn’t be Christmas Eve without Jammies.

And I almost forgot to take a picture by the glow of the Christmas tree. The kids were already in bed on Christmas Eve and I made them come back downstairs for a picture…notice that the Man-Child and Roo don’t even have their glasses on.

The things I make these poor kids do…good thing they love me!

we have an elf, but he doesn’t live on a shelf…

I didn’t do Christmas posts during Christmas so now I have to backtrack…

We have had an elf that lives with us during the Christmas season. His name is Pickles…

He has been part of our family for a few years…way before the silly Elf on the Shelf craze hit.

This year when Pickles visited he brought a letter explaining that Santa had given him a promotion and we would have a new elf living at our house.

His name is Gherkin.

And he was much more mischievous than Pickles had been.

I documented some the the mischief he got himself into during December.

Gherkin found the Kisses…he seems to like chocolate.

We found him taking the toy tractor out for a joy ride.

One night the kidlets had a family-room sleepover and Gherkin joined them…in Santa’s hat.

Gherkin took the rocking horse through it’s paces.

I found Gherkin hanging out on the couch with the remote and the channel was on infomercials. I’m glad the debit cards were put away where he couldn’t find them.

Gherkin enjoyed a goodie plate.

Who knew an elf would enjoy The Hunger Games?

At least with all the goodies he practiced good oral hygiene.

Gherkin floating in a sea of peppermints.

He seemed to enjoy the gluten-free treats too,

And he is a bit of an adrenalin junkie. We found him on top of our entertainment center.

He wasn’t impressed with our minimal tree decorations and added his own touch…toilet paper.

After we made our Gingerbread Houses he made himself right at home.

And he couldn’t keep himself away from all the ribbons and bows that we used for wrapping.

He was a silly little elf.

And we can’t wait to see what mischief he gets into next year.

Merry Christmas

From our house to yours.

This is what I want you to think our Christmas is like:

And this is what our Christmas morning really looks like:

May you enjoy your family and friends, near or far (showered or not), during this wonderful Christmas season.

Merry Christmas from the Chaos Clan.

Santa Claus is Coming to…the Mall

I can’t believe I have had this post sitting as a draft for a couple of weeks. I really am trying to avoid Christmas this year…

We made our tradition trip to visit Santa at the Mall for Family Home Evening (on the 3rd of December).

You aren’t supposed to use your camera to take pictures, but I wanted a few candid shots of the kidlets actually talking to Santa. I know, I’m such a rebel.

I like how LaLa is checking out the décor while Santa is talking to Ham.

I think maybe she got Santa and the Tooth Fairy confused. Or maybe she was bored listening to Einstein chat Santa up.

Roo came closer to get her chance to talk to Santa.

I didn’t feel guilty taking my own pictures since I forked over cash for the official Santa picture.

Look how cute they are!

After we were done visiting with Santa we headed to Hallmark for the kidlets to pick out their ornaments for the year.

I’m glad that the store was empty when we got there so the kidlets could swarm the ornament display.

It’s tough choosing just the right one.

LaLa was obsessed with The Polar Express when she was tiny. She thought about getting the ornament, but found an Angel one that she liked better.

I think Hammie has the hardest time choosing one.

It’s tough when there are so many good ones.

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The ironic thing about this post? The ornaments we got 2 1/2 weeks ago are the only ones on our tree. Yep we have a 9 ft tree with 6 ornaments, a ribbon garland and a few paper snowflakes.

We are seriously simplifying things this year!

Holiday Parade

The 1st of December was celebrated by our small town’s annual Holiday Parade.

One of the best things about living in a small town is a small town parade.

And I love how many people come out and watch the parade.

Do you need another reason to like small town parades?

Goats in costumes!

I think this goat shopped in the “sexy” costume section.

Not that I found the goat sexy…

There were even goats that were too lazy to march and were pulled by other goats.

And let’s not forget the sheep…

Of course they are too dignified to wear costumes and just sported tasteful decorations.

There were also horses.

And horses carrying Rodeo Queens.

But honestly we were there for the people…

Starting with our high school football team. Perhaps you have seen stories about them winning the State Championship for their division. Or more importantly because this is a team made up of great young men that protected a young special needs girl from bullying.

Even as awesome as the football team is, they weren’t why we were there…

We were there for the marching band.

More importantly one of the bass drum players in the marching band.

But that wasn’t all…

There was another band we were excited to see.

The jr high school symphonic band (even if they haven’t mastered walking and playing at the same time).

Einstein looks so serious.

And most importantly…

Santa

and the Firemen, but mostly Santa.

There was a little controversy in Casa de Chaos after the parade winners were announced…

The judges gave 1st place to the jr high band and 2nd place to the high school marching band.

I kind of think it was a tie…if you don’t count that one band can actually play and march at the same time.

Not many guys I know can pull off a purple plume and still look manly, but I think the Man-Child rocks the purple plume look.

My Boyz…

And you wouldn’t think it wouldn’t be hard to get a picture of them standing next to each other…

And you would be wrong.